Characterization of normal human mononuclear blood cells during diffusion chamber (DC) culture with respect to proliferation and expression of T-cell antigen.

Abstract

Normal human mononuclear blood cells were cultured for 13 d in diffusion chambers and the cell harvest on days 3, 6, 9 and 13 was characterized according to morphology, growth kinetics and surface antigen expression. The greatest part of the cell harvest consisted on all days of lymphoid cells. It could be shown that most of the cells carried the T-cell marker, the main growing population thus being T-cells. The mean anti-T-binding capacity per cell increased during the initial lag phase and reached its peak when the cell count was lowest. It dropped again during the following exponential growth phase to preculture values. These changes indicate an initial increase in surface antigen during the transition of cells from resting to a more activated state before the onset of DNA-synthesis, and a subsequent decrease which may indicate functional maturation.